Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/259

 England in the Middle Ages 223 mayest apply the wisdom which God has given thee wher- ever thou canst. Consider what punishments would come upon us if we neither loved wisdom ourselves nor suffered other men to obtain it : we should love the name only of Christian, and very few of the Christian virtues. When I thought of all this I remembered also how I saw the country before it had been all ravaged and burned ; how the churches throughout the whole of England stood filled with treasures and books. There was also a great multitude of God's servants, but they had very little knowledge of the books, for they could not understand anything of them because they were not written in their own language. As if they had said : " Our forefathers, who formerly held these places, loved wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth and bequeathed it to us. In this we can still see their traces, but we cannot follow them, and therefore we have lost both the wealth and the wisdom, because we would not incline our hearts after their example." When I remembered all this, I wondered extremely that the good and wise men who were formerly all over England, and had learned perfectly all the books, did not wish to translate them into their own language. But again I soon answered myself and said, " Their own desire for learning was so great that they did not suppose that men would ever be so careless, and that learning would so decay; and they wished, moreover, that the wisdom in this land might increase with our knowledge of languages." Then I remem- bered how the law was first known in Hebrew, and when the Greeks had learned it how they translated the whole of it into their own language, and all other books besides. And again the Romans, when they had learned it, translated the whole of it, through learned interpreters, into their own lan- guage. And also all other Christian nations translated a part of it into their own language. Therefore it seems better to me, if you agree, for us also to translate some of the books which are most needful for all men to know into the language which we can all under- stand ; and for you to see to it, as can easily be done if we